This is a life of imperfections, a world made of cheese-cloth, merely dyed black, and stamped in red letters—The Dustless-Duster. Yet a cheese-cloth world so dyed and stamped is better than a cloth-of-gold world, for the cloth-of-gold you would not want to dye nor to stamp with burning letters.
We have never found it,—this perfect thing,—and perhaps we never shall. But the desire, the search, the faith, must not fail us, as at times they seem to do. At times the very tides of the ocean seem to fail,—when the currents cease to run. Yet when they are at slack here, they are at flood on the other side of the world, turning already to pour back—
". . . lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast; full soon the time of the flood-tide shall be--"
The faith cannot fail us—for long. Full soon the ebb-tide turns,
"And Belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know"
that there is perfection; that the desire for it is the breath of life; that the search for it is the hope of immortality.
But I know only in part. I see through a glass darkly, and I may be no nearer it now than when I started, yet the search has carried me far from that start. And if I never arrive, then, at least, I shall keep going on, which, in itself maybe the thing—the Perfect Thing that I am seeking.
